CarBrandLogos archive · Zenvo · 2009

ZenvoST1

Fifteen cars built in Denmark, each with a twincharged American V8.

Photo: Gaurang Patkar · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Zenvo history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Zenvo ST1, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Denmark has almost no motor industry and punitive taxes on cars, which makes Zenvo's existence improbable and its choice of product more so. Founded in the mid-2000s, the company built its first car, the ST1, on Zealand from 2009: a mid-engined two-door coupe designed by Christian Brandt and Jesper Hermann around a heavily reworked 7.0-litre General Motors LS7 V8, fitted with both a supercharger and a turbocharger to make figures competitive with the era's established hypercars.

Lime Green Zenvo ST1 at GIMS 2015 06 · Ank Kumar · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

The engineering was deliberately unfashionable. Where rivals were moving to complex hybrid systems and dual-clutch gearboxes, Zenvo used a large-capacity pushrod V8 and offered a six-speed manual alongside an automated manual, on the argument that a small firm should build what it can build properly.

In production

Its moment of wider fame was unfortunate. A UK television test in 2014 ended with the car on fire, which is what most people who have heard of Zenvo remember about it. That obscured the more interesting fact, which is that a company with a handful of employees in a country with no supply chain designed, built and homologated a car of that performance at all.

Legacy

Just fifteen were produced between 2009 and 2016, and the TS1 GT that followed developed the same basic architecture. Zenvo has stayed small deliberately, and the ST1 established the pattern: extremely low volume, in-house engineering, and no attempt to be conventional.

At a glance